


4 O' Clock Appointment

by LittleEggBuddy



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, Anxiety Attacks, Danny Fenton Needs A Hug, I'm the reason its me, Intrusive Thoughts, OCs (mentioned) - Freeform, Suicidal Thoughts, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, probably only a oneshot, very thinly veiled venting ahead folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 02:53:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20959271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleEggBuddy/pseuds/LittleEggBuddy
Summary: A lot of people are scared of the dentist. The whirring machine, swinging lights and shady doctors make it a terrifying experience. Danny is scared of the dentist for other reasons. With someone picking around inside you, its easy for all of your nasty secrets to come to light.There's also the whole fang thing. That's not helping much.





	4 O' Clock Appointment

**Author's Note:**

> I'm gonna level with you all that this is 100% pure vent after a not so great dentists visit a while back. Also keep in mind that there are major triggers if you have anxiety ahead. Read the tags. You have been warned. If you do wanna muddle through my thinly veiled personal problems though, consider dropping a comment. They are what inspire me to keep writing! :)

Danny has learned that familiarity does not always breed comfort. 

The smell of oil, the look of condiment stains caked into crevices between car seats, and the high-pitched whine of ectoplasm powering the GAV were as familiar to him as the back of his own palm. Still, the commonplace sensations did nothing to quell his spiraling thoughts. 

Danny had a dentist appointment. 

Additionally, he had fangs.  
  
Technically, the fangs were optional. His canines only sharpened when he was bathed in unusually high ectoplasmic concentrations, in a fight, or when he was having an anxiety attack. 

It was almost cruelly humorous that his anxiety attack revolving around having fangs was causing him to have them in the first place. 

Well, it would be hilarious if it was not undeniably awful. 

His parents continued to jabber on about ghosts in the front seat, oblivious to their son's predicament. They rarely keyed in on even the barest aspects of his life, so Danny was not astounded by this. Still, a little support would be highly appreciated in this situation. 

Danny gripped the polyester seat belt tightly, attempting to use the pain of the hard fabric digging into his palm to ground him. Still his thoughts continued to race by him in a frantic fashion. 

SHEISGOINGTOFIGUREITOUTWEWILLDIE stop ANDIFWEDIESOWILLEVERYONEELSE this isn't rational DOYOUWANTEVERYONETODIEGOTTAGETOUT if I can just calm down IFWEWERENOTSUCHAFREAK i'm ok i'm ok i'm ok EVERYONEWILLBEHURTBYUS please DISGUSTINGFREAK shut up shut up shUT UP SHUT UP.

Rationally, he knew he was blowing everything out of proportion. Actually most of his consciousness appeared to be saying: (Really? We are doing THIS again?)

However, it was that little, vile, corner of fear and self-hate that piloted his actions. In an awful sort of way, he found it amusing that he could defeat ghosts triple his size but was rendered powerless in the face of paranoia. Figures.

Danny was not even afraid of his dentist.

He actually quite liked Dr. Fictive. She had purple hair, a tattoo sleeve that displayed many colorful butterflies, and always called him Pal. He liked to think Adult Sam would be a lot like her, once she had a chance to mellow out and had a less stressful living situation.

It was not like he was under any illusions that all dentists were secretly evil and just waiting for the correct moment to slit his throat with the sharpened end of a toothbrush. 

*Unless she is a ghost*

(That is so unlikely Spectra was one time please do not latch onto that thought please don't consider that please)

*Too late*

In actuality, it was not until a few days ago that Danny had even started worrying about his appointment at all.   
***  
He had just finished up a math worksheet that was embarrassingly a few weeks past due, and had made a quick trip to the family bathroom to pee before going out on nightly patrol. He had just finished washing his hands when an alarming thought occurred to him. 

*The dentists are going to find you disgusting.*

In the face of ghost fighting, barely keeping afloat in school, and desperately trying to maintain some semblance of a social life, hygiene had gone out the wayside. 

Inspecting himself in the mirror, Danny found little to contradict the former unwelcome thought. 

Instead of the usual fluffy side swept wave, his hair clung to the hollows of his face in greasy strands. After running his hands through it a few times, he discovered it was matted with dirt and dried blood. 

Finding time to implement any sort of skin care routine was laughable, and thus his skin was marred but angry red blotches and pus-filled zits. 

In addition, his sleep schedule had been abhorrent for nearly a year. As a consequence, his eyes had a permanent tear-filled look and were shadowed by dark purple bags.

His lips curled at his own reflection. 

*Are you really going to force Dr. Fictive to stare at your disgusting face for an hour? You are pathetic.*

Nearing hysteria, Danny flickered intangible, taking care to separate himself from the grime that coated his body. It was impossible to tell if the numb feeling coating his limbs was from the intangibility or the rapidly encroaching anxiety.

He tried to think coherent, clean thoughts before reappearing. After feeling the warm, tingly feeling of tangibility soak back into his limbs, he attempted to evaluate whether his get-clean-quick scheme was successful. 

The amount of ugly, red streaked dirt that was now smeared across the once flowery mint green tile was revolting. His stomach was clenched, no wonder no one could stand him, he probably made the other students want to hurl. 

*Look how disgusting you are. Who could love you?*  
Still, perhaps his efforts had managed to clean him up a little. Beginning to reinspect himself in the bathroom mirror, he felt tears begin to well in his eyes. It was not good enough. He felt sickened at his reflection; the drooping corpse that all too well reflected the exhaustion that haunted his every waking hour. 

Most of the gunk was self generated, thus was immune to being phased off of his body. He desperately needed a shower. However, if he skipped his patrol, that could mean....

*disgustingdisgustingdisgustingdisgusting*

*YOUHAVETOPROTECTWITHOUTYOUPEOPLEWILLDIEWHATISWRONGWITHYOU*

Stifling a sob, Danny sunk to the floor. For the past 2 years, the universe appeared dead set on forcing him to choose between his duty and his well-being. Usually, Danny chose his duty without question but he was nearing his breaking point. 

Everyday he floundered deeper into a mess of pain and obligation and hate. His friends saw him as a super hero, a paragon of justice and good will that they had lucked into being friends with. Friendlier Amity citizens saw him as a martyr, a pure soul who had died too young and then dedicated their afterlife to be a spirit of protection. His parents saw him as a mindless, evil infection, to be weeded out and mercilessly destroyed. 

Danny knew that he was not any of those things. He was not brave or selfless or fortunate or pure, and as his screaming thoughts were testament to, certainly not mindless. He was just a sixteen year old boy. He was sacred, exhausted, constantly on the edge of a breakdown, and so, so tired of being in pain. 

He pressed his face into the cool tile and tried to conceive calming thoughts. He had no therapist (thanks for the trauma Spectra) but Jazz had taught him some calming techniques. He breathed in slowly, counting to ten, and let the air slowly trail out of his mouth. 

Distantly, it registers that this thought process is not entirely rational. He was not a stranger to panic attacks and had, with varying degrees of success, been dealing with them for the last quarter of his life. He was just another baggy eyed, greasy teenager. Dr. Fictive would not think anything weird about him. Right?

But unlike every other teen, he had to handle the staunchly opposite creatures taking residence within his body, both with different needs, battling in his head for attention. Talk about intrusive thoughts. 

That coupled with his ghost metabolism, which all but canceled out his anxiety meds, had caused his paranoia to warp from a manageable inconvenience to an uncontrollable beast screaming inside of him. 

A quiet beeping alarm pulled him from his self-pity. Attempting to quell his spiraling thoughts and wiping away tears pooling in the corner of his eyes, he mindlessly checked his watch. 

Neon blue numbers flashed 6:50 up at him. It was the alarm he set to remind himself to go out on his 7:00 patrol. He risked a glance at the shower. He had ten minutes, theoretically sufficient time to take a quick rinse. 

Mind made up, he set the water to scalding and got in. 

Than back in again.

And again.

And in and out and in and out and in-

It ended up being an hour before he could pull himself out of his cycle. It took too many times under water much too hot for an ice-core ghost for Danny to feel clean again. After the third wash, most of the filth he perceived was admittedly non-existent but he could not shake the feeling of dirt right beneath the surface, writhing under his skin. 

He never did end up going on patrol that night. Instead, he had dragged himself to his bed and ended up crying himself to sleep there, still soggy and naked. The cool sheets soothed his aching back, which he had scrubbed raw. He missed a few major ghost attacks that night, leaving most of them to the Huntress, but he could not find it in himself to care. 

The next two days leading up to his appointment, Danny only felt worse. He became obsessed with correcting all his oddities and imperfections in time for his dentist appointment.  
***  
This all came to a head with the fang problem. They not only ran the risk of exposing his secret, but were disgusting, sharp and animistic and wrong. They jutted out of his thin lips, giving him a deranged look. 

With any luck, perhaps Dr. Fictive would be as disinterested in him as his parents.

As if he ever got lucky.

As if anyone could care less than his parents. 

Of course the one time they tried to look after his well-being was scheduling this fucking dentist's appointment. Danny was really starting to question the upsides to the whole "having parents" thing. 

Speaking of his parents, Danny noted with alarm that their conversation had lulled. Shit, his fangs!. They had most definitely noticed and now they knew and the hated him and they were going to kill him. His eyes quickly looked for the nearest escape route, if they attacked he might be able to bolt out the sun roof...  
" We've arrived Sweetie!" Maddie's voice rang out over his panic.

"Huh?" Dumbfoundedly, Danny blinked up at his parents. Oh the GAV had stopped, when had that happened? "Oh yeah, the appointment was where we were going. I'd almost forgotten..." He mumbled unconvincingly. 

"Yep! Are you ready Danno?" As usual, Jack missed the nuance behind his son's words and steamrolled over the awkwardness. 

Instead of replying, Danny simultaneously released his death grip on the seat belt and unbuckled it, stepping out of the car. The sun felt like an assault on his already stinging eyes and he could feel those damned fangs digging holes into the bottom lip they were bearing down on. 

The dentists office loomed overhead, large and frightening, the grinning vampire mascot taunting him from above. His parents saddled up beside him and his mother, apparently sensing his discomfort, rubbed his back in a facsimile of comfort. 

Shrugging her off, Danny began to walk towards the building. If they lingered any longer they were going to be late. 

And in the back of his mind he wished the portal had really killed him. His fangs only lengthened in response. 


End file.
